


Run, You Clever Girl, And Remember

by minnabird



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-09
Updated: 2014-03-09
Packaged: 2018-01-15 02:34:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1288036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minnabird/pseuds/minnabird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the Doctor presses the Big Friendly Button, Clara doesn't forget everything she learned. She remembers. Alternate ending to Journey to the Center of the TARDIS.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Run, You Clever Girl, And Remember

The TARDIS console room was quiet and peaceful, like a beach after a powerful storm. There was no debris to be seen, though, because the storm hadn’t, in fact, happened. The Big Friendly Button (really the remote control for the Magno-Grab) had seen to that. Paradox resolved, time-loop closed, check, the Doctor thought, as he polished a lever.

There was a soft step at the door, and Clara entered the room, toweling her hair dry. She leaned on the console, looking pensive. “I feel exhausted. I feel…”

“We’ve had two days crammed into the space of one,” the Doctor said, starting off around the console.

Clara followed. “Why would you say that?”

“I don’t know. I say stuff. Ignore me.” The Doctor leaned in and spun one of the gizmos, looking as if he was concentrating, and then kept moving. Clara had come to a stop, though, her towel now trailing on the ground.

“But it’s not just stuff, is it?” she said abruptly. “I remember…” She trailed off, a little frown between her eyebrows, as the memories unfolded in her mind. They had been teasing at the back of her brain, like the edge of a dream, and now they came back in a rush. “You said I’d forget. You wanted me to forget!” Her eyes focused on him, and there was more confusion in her face. “All because I saw your name…?”

“Don’t,” the Doctor said, stopping, his shoulders tense.

“All right, you have your secrets,” Clara said briskly, though she quietly resolved to have a shufti at that book later - she had only seen a sentence or two. It was talking about it that gave the Doctor that hunted look, surely. It couldn’t be _that_ bad…

But then she remembered the Doctor she’d seen in the TARDIS’ snarl, when he had been accusing her of being some kind of trick.

“Hold on a tick,” she said. “Are you going to tell me about meeting me before? Or were you going to keep _that_ a secret, too? Were you ever going to tell me, or were you just going to string me along until you could work out what was wrong with me?” She paused for breath, her eyes wide, her cheeks flushed with anger.

“Clara, I…” The Doctor made the sort of gesture that Clara, in her short time on the TARDIS, had learned meant he was trying to work out how to explain something so that a mere human mind could grasp it.

“No,” she said firmly. “It’s not all that complicated. Whoever else you met, you know me. Can’t you trust me?” She stood with arms crossed, hair hanging down in wet tendrils, a challenging look in her dark eyes. Behind the challenge, she felt uncertainty. She had thought they were friends, maybe…

The Doctor looked up at her, and she saw the hesitation before he drew breath to speak.

“Take me home,” she said. His face creased up, and he started to speak, and she cut him off again. “ _I want to go home,_ ” she enunciated, her voice shaking just a bit. The Doctor turned away, bustling at the controls, his eyes fixed on his hands.

“There,” he said. “2013, Earth, London.” The time rotor began to move, and the TARDIS engines to wheeze, and Clara went to lean on the railing, her back to the Doctor. She wanted to leave the room entirely, but since they’d be landing in a moment…

When the noise ceased, she straightened. “I’ll just go collect my things,” she said, affecting a chipper voice, and left the console room. Her shoulders tightened as she passed through the corridor. What if the TARDIS redirected her again? Did she take sides? The ship had never seemed to like her much, and after her experiences (yesterday? today?) she couldn’t discount this feeling as just her overactive imagination at work.

But she emerged unscathed, and she stood with a heavy heart as the TARDIS faded away, leaving her alone in the Maitlands’ front garden.

Angie poked her head out of the house. “Clara? Was that a car in the driveway?”

“Oh!” Clara wiped one of her eyes surreptitiously and smiled at Angie. “No, just passing. Your dad home yet?”

“He doesn’t get home till six-thirty?” Angie said, rolling her eyes, then shut the door.

Clara pulled out her phone and checked the time, alarmed. “Oh, Doctor,” she murmured, a twist to her mouth. She tucked the phone into her pocket and hurried away. It was five thirty, and her past self, the one who was still going to meet the Doctor, was still inside the Maitlands’ house.


End file.
